Monthly Archives: April 2014

While a major research effort in the Gilroy Lab involves studying how plants grow in microgravity on the ISS, equally huge is ongoing plant research on the ground here in our lab at UW-Madison.

Last week, Won-Gyu’s paper on calcium signaling in Arabidopsis was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). He discovered that when roots are hit locally with salt stress, a calcium wave quickly spreads from the point of stress throughout the whole plant. This calcium wave plays a role in how plants communicate within themselves to coordinate a response.

Arabidopsis thaliana growing in salt water. The plant on the right has more of the protein channel TPC1, thought to be involved in calcium signaling in plants. The plant at center has less TPC1 than normal, and the one on the left is considered normal.